Parent and Family Involvement

Parent and family involvement is very important.  After listening to the Parent and Family stories it has strengthened my opinion on the manner.  Professional I feel that all parents and families are key to strengthening a young child's developmental process and academic success.  I am a teacher of a preschool class and I have seen how parents who are involved have a great influence on their children.  I have troubled children do a complete 180 once the parents and I came together and formulate a plan.  This was also true with what I heard on through the stories.  In my personal life I a mother of four and I have one child who went through the Head Start program.  He was a child who seemed to be developing certain challenges and those challenges were eliminated once he was placed in the program and my husband and I became more involved.  There was consistency for him and was able to learn and grow through the partnership between his teachers and myself. 

 I understand that some parents are not able to involved as much as they would like to be because of outside factors.  Things that work and time are most common factors that hinder parents from being more involved.  However, it is my opinion that even busy parents can find some time to get engage in their children's education.  This is just my opinion.  I think that even participating once or twice a year in person and constantly through emails and electronic devices can make a big difference.   

Public Opinion subject to change

I am currently a lead teacher of young twos (24-30 months old) classroom and there are many things I would like to change in the next five years.  I firmly believe two years old is a great age to introduce children to academic, social, and emotional teachings.  Constantly all I hear from adults is how 2 year olds are too difficult to teach, how they are too young to learn, and they don't sit still long enough to participate in activities like circle time and art projects.  However, I have found this to be untrue.  In my classroom I run circle times and have small group activities.  My motto for teaching the young twos is INTRODUCTION, SENSORY, and REPETITION and so far this has worked.  I have enough activities during the day (4-5 activities) to keep them busy and this limits their free play to only two half-hours a day.  Once in the morning and once in the afternoon.  They don't run around and the morning activities consist of physical, intellectual, and social play that they take naps from being tired out.

 

 

It makes me feel like I am on the right track because when I was studying about Kindergarten and the roles of it I learned that it was just an avenue for children to learn socialization and emotional regulations.  However, Kindergarten transformed into something more in depth as the years progressed as people learned more about the learning capabilities of five years olds.  So public opinion will change as more teachers and professionals speak out about the capabilities young children, even two year olds.       

About Early Childhood Education; Advocacy and Public Policy

I chose this specialization because I want to be a child advocate.  I want to help children and their families with as much support as possible.  I am Lead teacher for income households and I want to be more helpful.  I have always wanted to help children get the best education as possible.  I not only teach low income households but I grew up in one and I saw my parents struggle for me and my siblings to have the best education possible.  I am proud to say 4 out 5 of us have degrees and 2 of us are in graduate school. 

 I think advocates are important to the field because advocates are the voices of people who aren't being heard.  It's not that they can't speak for themselves, it is that they don't know laws and regulations or even programs that there to help them.  Advocates are there to make sure programs are in place, people are getting the resources they need to survive.  Also they assist in developing policies for the field too.

It is my desire to learn how to be an effective advocate for the field.  I want be a part of the policy making process to provide all children with a better education.  I also want to find new ways to gain resources for the field.